


Hands Clean

by HiLarpItsCat



Category: Scion (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: Creepy, TBD IC Canon, Titan (TBD)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 21:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6487687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiLarpItsCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the explosion, he was free.<br/>No one could tell him what to do ever again.<br/>And people were so helpful.<br/>That was good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands Clean

**Author's Note:**

> This fic got _dark_.

Every morning, he mopped the floors of the lobby. Marble colored, clean and white, it took a lot of care and attention. He loved the shift on Sundays… no one came in and the floors were perfect and unblemished. He hated Monday mornings, when the building opened again and his floors were dirtied up by uncaring shoes. 

People should care more about clean things, he thought.

That particular morning, however, was a Thursday. Some people ignored his little yellow sign and slipped on the wet floors. They gave him dirty looks as they regained their balance and continued on to the elevators. He wanted to make the rules here and tell them all to remove their shoes, to enter the lobby as though it were a sacred temple. He wanted them to fall to their knees in prostration. 

There was a slight commotion at the check-in desk. There was a van parked outside. No one was supposed to park there. They couldn’t find the driver. 

The driver, it turned out, was long gone by that point. 

The van exploded, turning his clean marble floors into rubble.

_____________________________________________

When his vision returned, all he could see was a vast blue sky. He was lying on his back, looking up from the shattered remains of the building.

His first thought surprised him. Not _I’m alive_ , but instead: _I’m free._

He got to his feet slowly. Still in one piece. No injuries. And free.

He began to walk. No one stopped him. Emergency crews were still on their way. If he was still there when they arrived, they would stop him. They would make him stay. 

It was only now, under that flawless blue sky, that he realized how much he hated that building. All it did was disappoint him, even those white lobby floors that he thought he loved so much. No matter how hard he worked, nothing would stop those floors from becoming dirty again. 

But now, his futile labors were over. He could do whatever he wanted now. 

There was a fountain a block away. The water smelled cool and crisp. He sat down on a bench facing the fountain. It was beautiful. It was so clean.

A man in a suit dropped a cigarette and ground it into the pavement in front of him. He stood.

“Pick that up,” he told the man.

“Whatever,” the man said, continuing on his way. 

“You are making it dirty,” he said. “It isn’t right to make things dirty.” He grabbed the man by the shoulder, stopping him.

“Hey, what the hell? Get off me!” the man said.

The man in the suit looked like all the other men in suits who dirtied up his clean floors every morning. He hated those men.

“It isn’t right,” he said to the man. “Things should be clean.”

The man dropped to his knees, and snatched up the cigarette with shaking fingers. 

The man was looking up at him, still on his knees. That was good. It was good for the man to be so respectful.

“You are the dirty one,” he told the man. “The dirt is inside of you.”

Hands now shaking violently, the man put the cigarette stub into his mouth. He gagged, but swallowed it. That was good. 

“More,” he told the man. The man trembled in terror and, now lying on his belly, began to lick the pavement. That was good, too. People should be helpful. They should help keep things clean.

More people came to the fountain. They cleaned and cleaned. 

Anyone who could have told him to stop were back at the building. Some of them were in pieces. He didn’t have to listen to them anymore. He was free. 

However, he did decide that someday, he would go back and clean up all that mess. Not right away, though. He wasn’t going to be so quick to forgive anymore. He would clean better places first. It would go faster now that he had so much help. There were so many helpful people now. That was good.

Once he was done cleaning the dirty places, he would make sure to clean the people too. They were all so dirty, even the helpful ones. Oils in the hair and the skin and dust in the clothes. 

The man in the suit was bleeding from his mouth now. He had forgotten about all the blood that people carried inside of them. Now it was on the pavement. “Wipe that up,” he told the man. 

The man took off his suit jacket, and wiped up the blood with it. The rough pavement tore through the expensive fabric until there were only damp threads left. The man ripped his shirt open, sending buttons flying onto the nice clean pavement. The man ate the buttons, and then the remains of his suit, before continuing on with his wadded-up shirt. That was good. The man understood now. 

Slowly, all of his helpers began to understand. They used their tongues until there was blood, and then their shirts until there were only threads, and then they tore out their hair and used that to scrub. Everything that was too dirty and couldn’t clean anymore was eaten. It was so tidy. That was good.

More and more people came to help.

It was all going so well until some other people came. They were not helpful. 

“Jesus Christ,” one of them gasped. “Are they _eating_ each other?”

They were going to stop him. That wasn’t right. People should be helpful.

“Careful,” said another one. “It must have escaped during the explosion.”

That was true. He had escaped. He was free. He didn’t have to listen to them anymore.

Then they spoke too quietly for him to hear. That wasn’t fair. 

His helpers tried to stop them, but they didn’t play fair. They used dirty tricks. 

It wasn’t fair that he was the one who had to stop. It wasn’t fair when they took him away again and locked him up and talked about him without even asking him what he wanted. 

“This is so fucked,” one of them said. Even their language was filthy. 

“Imprisoning it was the wrong decision. We could probably destroy this one if we had enough power,” the other one said.

“Let me make a few calls,” said the first one.

Time passed and he was trapped and couldn’t clean anything anymore. He almost found himself missing those white lobby floors. 

Then another person came and started setting up a ritual. It was tidy, he thought. A nice circle that reminded him of a fountain. Only he was in the center now. He was the fountain. That was good. 

There was a tremendous pressure, a whiff of ash, and then he was gone. Wiped away clean, like a marble floor.

That was good.


End file.
